Discoverability

or - How NOT to not be seen

Some people try not to be seen. This does not always end well. If your goals are the contrary, however, then these tips may be of value.

The best thing you can do, although perhaps the hardest, is to provide good content that people will want to watch. No amount of discoverability will help if viewers wander off bored. Of course, this is simple but not easy, and this document isn’t the place to discuss that, beyond empahsizing its importance.

So how can you be found? Starting with the simplest and easiest methods…

• Stream category. While this may seem obvious, it’s also quite important, and there are many people who browse categories for games they love, or browse the Art category, or whatever it is they want to watch. It’s easy, free, and can definitely help!
• Title and tags. As these are free-form, they are less effective at showing your stream to viewers, but more effective at telling them whether they want to watch. Certain keywords might show up in searches, though, so check your analytics and see what helps.
• Stream team! Partners can create them, everyone can join them [TODO: do you need to be affiliated?]. A stream team can help you find friends, and can help viewers find you.
• Network. Yes, this is another really hard one, but immensely valuable. Again, this page is not the place to go into detail about this, but you can help your stream grow by raiding at the end of your streams, spending time in other people’s streams, and generally making friends and establishing good connections.
• Followers. If someone’s interested enough in your content to ask Twitch to tell them when you go live, they’re likely to want to watch you. Just don’t fall for the spammers who promise to sell you hollow follows.
• Viewers. While there are many points of confusion regarding how viewership is counted, it is generally accepted that more viewers - even ones that “aren’t counted” - will help with your visibility. Which in turn means that every single person watching your stream is valuable!

The flip side of this is some things you can do that will turn people away. It’s a waste of time attracting someone to see your stream if you then push them away from watching or chatting. This list is entirely subjective, and what’s a major turn-off for one person might be a complete non-issue for another.

• Chat restrictions. Slow mode? Instant follower-only mode? Time-delayed follower-only mode? Unique chat? Subscriber-only? All of these will drive viewers away, to greater or lesser extents (slow mode is the least concern, sub-only will block people who don’t pay money). Similarly, requiring that a user have two-factor authentication, or phone verification, or any other restriction, will immediately dissuade those who have not done so. These measures are effective at reducing spam, but they do so by also reducing legit chatters too.
• Lengthy chat rules. Keep ‘em brief or nobody will want to read them.
• Unexplained lack of interactivity. There’s nothing wrong with streaming without a webcam or microphone, but without some sort of connection between you and the viewers, there’s less to keep them watching you. Fortunately, recent chat messages will be shown to newly-arriving chatters, which can help with this. (As a side note, this is another great reason to have some sort of countdown timer on your starting and BRB scenes. Someone who sees that it’s only a couple of minutes until you return is more likely to stick around than someone who just sees that you’re absent.)
• Obnoxious sounds or visuals. This is even more subjective than the others on this list, so all I will say is that, for every viewer, there is a limit to what they will want to accept.
• Toxic people in your chat. You have a banhammer for a reason; create the chat environment that your viewers will want to hang out in.

What are your favourite ways to find new viewers? What tips have I omitted? Reach out to me on Twitch, Discord, or GitHub, and get your ideas added above!